2 DAYS UNTIL MGS4!

We're almost there, folks! I'm at the very end of MGS2, and I should have no trouble beating it tonight. My original plan for this blog was to write about aspects of each game as I beat them, but with my schedule the way it has been I've had to kind of abandon that idea and just write about whatever I have time for. Rest assured, I'll be maintaining and updating this blog for the foreseeable future! I haven't covered a quarter of the topics I want to yet, and I have no doubt that MGS4 will only provide more to theorize and obsess over!

Today's random Metal Gear fact:

Speaking of obsession...

...I own a lot of Metal Gear stuff.

In the top photo, going from top to bottom and left to right, are the following:

1. PSP with Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops "body armor" attached.
2. Box the PSP MGS:PO body armor came in.
3. MetalGear Solid official strategy guide
4. Metal Gear (NES)
5. Snake's Revenge (NES)
6. Metal Gear Solid (the same copy I bought on launch day on 10/21/98!)
7. Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions
8. Metal Gear: Ghost Babel (AKA Metal Gear Solid in the U.S.)
9. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (again, same copy I bought on launch day!)
10. Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance
11. The Document of Metal Gear Solid 2
12. Worlds of Power: Metal Gear (a godforsaken abomination which will be covered in detail in a future update...)
13. Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater (launch day again!)
14. Box for Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence Collector's Edition
15. Metal Gear Solid 3: Subsistence
16. MGS3: Subsistence "Existence" Collector's Edition Disk
17. Metal Gear Ac!d
18. Metal Gear Ac!d 2
19. Metal Gear Solid: Portable Ops (couldn't find the case for it, but I still have it somewhere)
20. Metal Gear Solid: Digital Graphic Novel (This is pretty rare!)
21. Metal Gear Solid comic collection 1
22. Metal Gear Solid: The Complete Guide
23. Metal Gear Legacy Vol. 1 (pre-order bonus for MGS3: Subsistence)
24. MGS2: Sons of Liberty Original Soundtrack
25. MGS3: Snake Eater Original Soundtrack
26. MGS: Portable Ops Original Soundtrack
27. Metal Gear Legacy Vol. 2 (pre-order bonus for MGS4: Guns of the Patriots)
    

Underneath all that is a close-up of my Raiden and MGS2 Snake figures. I have a figure of Big Boss (as he appears near the end of MGS3) as well, but that one is currently guarding my desk at work. The only other Metal Gear-related artifact I have that isn't shown here is one of the original E3 fliers for Metal Gear Solid (passed out at E3 in 1998, I believe). It's this full-sized, fold-out brochure; lavishly colored and illustrated, and covered with info about the game. It's not pictured because I just now remembered I have it. Heh.

SIX Days Until MGS4!

Today's random Metal Gear fact:


I don't recall where I first saw it, but this was the ad that made the 12-year-old me want to check out the NES version of Metal Gear. I eventually rented it, couldn't figure out where to go or what to do, and returned it a day later without accomplishing jack shit.

Then I played it again a year or two later and loved it. For years after that, my friend Matt and I would occasionally speculate on how it cool it would be if Konami would make another Metal Gear game someday.

Finally, in 1997, Metal Gear Solid was revealed to the world. Even before it was released, I knew it was going to be something special. Little did I know that Metal Gear would go on to become my favorite game series of all time...

ONE WEEK UNTIL MGSIV!

The time is nearly upon us! One week from this very moment, I will be playing Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots! Just this morning, I was extremely excited to learn that one of the Gamestop locations in Champaign, IL (which is where I spend most of my time) will be doing a midnight launch of MGS4. You can bet your ass that I'll be the first one in line! Here's a list of all the Gamestop stores that will be selling it at midnight on launch day:

http://www.gamestop.com/gs/landing/mgs4/MGS4Midnight.pdf?affid=3346&wt.mc_id=mgs4

Be there, or crawl into a dark and filthy corner and turn your tear-burnt eyes away from the cruel light of the unforgiving world like the miserable wretch you know you are and always will be!

Ahem. Anyway, here's today's Metal Gear fact of the day:

The third clone produced in the Les Enfant Terrible project, Solidus Snake, was actually the President of the United States of America during the events of MGS1. As a result of those events, the existance of Metal Gear REX was made public knowledge, and Solidus--known as President by his "real" name, George Sears--resigned his office.

This was not done out of disgrace, no matter what the public might have thought. Solidus knew better than anyone that the Presidency was a sham--the winner of every election was selected and then controlled by The Patriots. Solidus was sick of being under their thumbs, and went underground after his resignation to plan a way of striking at The Patriots directly.

Even though the presidental elections in the USA as it exists in the world of Metal Gear are rigged by The Patriots, I still find it extremely interesting to ponder how "George Sears" was sold to the public. Did he run as a Republican or a Democrat? Seeing as the second Iraq War officially does happen in the Metal Gear timeline, is Solidus meant to replace Bush in the series' fictional Presidental lineup, or did he beat Bush in the 2004 election? I like to think it's the latter case, as that would mean that Solidus Snake--who in the past had murdered innocent people without a second thought and trained child soldiers in Africa--ran as a Democrat. Don't get me wrong, I'm pretty liberal myself, but I'm absolutely in love with the irony of that possibility.

8 Days Until MGS4!

We've almost a week to go, and I'm close to the end of MGS1! I should easily beat it tonight, but I'm gonna have to really buckle down to make it through MGS2 with my current work schedule. I know I can do it, but it's a bit frustrating that I won't have time to write the kajillion-and-one things I want to about MGS2 before MGS4 hits.

I actually have a fair amount of mostly-finished articles related to MGS2 that I'll try and get posted up in the next week. Stay tuned for those, as well as more Metal Gear trivia. Speaking of which...

Today's random Metal Gear fact:

Solid Snake's real name is David. He says so in both endings of MGS1.

This probably has nothing to do with the fact that Snake's American voice actor is named David Hayter. It seems more likely that Kojima named him this as a reference to 2001: A Space Odyssey, especially considering the exchange he has with Otacon in the (non-canon) ending where Meryl dies:

Otacon: "So, what're you gonna do now, Snake?"

Snake: "David. My name is David, Otacon."

Otacon: "...I'm Hal, Dave."

Snake: "Heh. Hal and Dave. That's a good
one! Maybe we should take a trip to Jupiter together."

Also like David Bowman in 2001, Snake endures a ton of freaky shit, and then suddenly finds himself turning old. The parallels are endless, I tell you!

10 Days Until MGS4!

Today's Random Metal Gear fact:

On the subject of Snake's Revenge, take a look at this:

Yes, they actually made one of those godawful LCD handheld games for Snake's Revenge. No, I never played it. Yes, I'm fine with that.

For the morbidly curious, here's a link to the manual of this travesty:
http://www.hasbro.com/common/instruct/Snake

Sounds... uh, "fun."

PS3 Procured!

With the advent of MGS4 less than two weeks away, I decided yesterday that it was time to quit dawdling and get myself a PS3. I drove to Best Buy, grabbed the only PS3 I could find on the shelves, picked out a couple of blu-rays, and proceeded to the checkout. I'd been saving up for one since the beginning of the year, so it wasn't a huge bite out of my current finances.

I was feeling pretty psyched as I returned to my car. The only thing that was even slightly annoying me was my unexpected discovery that Sweeny Todd apparently isn't out on blu-ray (seriously, what the hell?). I ploppped my new acquisition down in the passenger's seat and looked it over... and then there was a disturbance in the force. I suddenly realized three things:

1. The PS3 I'd just bought only had a lame SIXAXIS controller packed-in with it, not a Dualshock 3.


2. It also only came with shitty composite video cables, not HDMI cables.


3. I was a gigantic tool for not realizing either of those things before that moment.

Well, I'll be damned if I'm going to half-ass Metal Gear Solid 4, of all things. I drove across the street to Target and bought myself an HDMI cable and a Dualshock 3. Then I went home, hooked up my new PS3, and beheld its awesomeness.

OK... admittedly, I hadn't actually bought any games for it. Right now I'm still focused on beating all the Metal Gear games. I don't have time to spare for anything else at the moment, especially considering how many hours I'm going to be stuck working during the upcoming week (13 hour days, anyone?). That being said, I had fun exploring the Playstation Network a bit. There were two things in particular that I was excited to discover: one, I could choose a picture of Sly Cooper as my PSN profile avatar; and two, there's a downloadable theme that makes the UI menus on your PS3 look all retro and pixellated, just like the menus in No More Heroes. Badass!

Just for the record, here are the two blu-rays I ended up buying:

I'm not sure it's even possible to get two movies that are more opposite of each other.

13 Days Until MGS4!

Today's Random Metal Gear Fact:

The NES version of Metal Gear was extremely successful in America, and Snake's Revenge was Konami's follow-up, released in 1990 in the U.S. under the Ultra Games banner. However, it was not developed by series creator Hideo Kojima. While Snake's Revenge is considered the bastard child of the series by many fans, I have to admit I liked it when it came out. Hell, I thought Snake's Revenge was the real sequel to Metal Gear until I bought Metal Gear Solid and read the synopsis of past games in the manual--that was the first time I ever heard of Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake.

Snake's Revenge isn't necessarily a bad game, but it contains a lot of questionable design choices. From the very beginning, the game really gets off on the wrong foot. The starting area is a jungle patrolled by guards flying around in weird helicopter-buggy contraptions. These assholes are positioned so that they will immediately spot you the second you leave the first screen in the game, setting off an alert and flooding the area with troops. Brilliant way to start off a stealth game, dumbasses.

When that alert goes off, the next problem with Snake's Revenge rears its ugly head--it's fricking hard. Even the wussiest guards have one huge advantage over Snake: they can shoot diagonally, while Snake can only shoot up, down, left, or right. In other words, every enemy in the game can hit you far more easily than you can hit them. And this is before the designers throw grenade-tossing soldiers who can (and WILL) hit you with pinpoint accuracy from over walls into the mix. On top of that, the game contains countless hazards that simply kill Snake instantly--swaying bridges, magical shipping pallets floating over bottomless pits (seriously), and collapsing floors in every other goddamn room, to name just a few.

OK, so it's hard. But is that really enough to garner the level of derision this game receives? Surely not. That would take something really moronic, right? Something terribly executed and completely out of place in a stealth game...

Yeah, that should just about do it.

For some unfathomable reason, the designers of Snake's Revenge thought it would be a good idea to cram horribly shitty side-scrolling action sequences into their game. Not only are these parts completely out of place, they control terribly. Most of the time Snake moves like he's underwater--and when he actually is underwater, he moves like a wounded slug crawling up a steep grade against a strong headwind. On top of all that, the stealth mechanics completely break down in these scenes. If you happen to walk from one screen to the next while a guard on the new screen is looking in your direction, it's an instant alert--and there is NO WAY to tell where they'll be looking before moving forward. Since the guards move much faster than Snake and have shots that travel faster and farther than his across the screen, beating these sequences basically boils down to having enough rations to survive running away from the onslaught of trained killers that inevitably ends up on your tail. Fun!

Despite all this, Hideo Kojima himself has said that he likes Snake's Revenge, and that he considers it a game in the spirit of the series. In fact, in a way Snake's Revenge is responsible for the Metal Gear series becoming what it is today. While Snake's Revenge was in production at Konami, Kojima actually ended up sitting next to its lead designer on a train one morning. The designer told him what he was working on, and asked Kojima to please make a game about the "real" Snake. That was what inspired Kojima to make Metal Gear 2: Solid Snake... and eventually, Metal Gear Solid! (http://tinyurl.com/6xolpo)

As bad as some parts of Snake's Revenge are, I'd be lying if I said there weren't a few cool moments. There's a sequence where Snake has to infiltrate a ship and blow it up from the inside, which ends with a mad dash for an escape helicopter as the whole place begins exploding. There's a fairly cool part on a train, as well. And at least you actually get to see Metal Gear in the freaking game, which puts it ahead of the NES version of Metal Gear in at least one respect. It's really the combination of the game's jacked-up difficulty and those retarded side-scrolling parts that makes Snake's Revenge hard to go back to.

BONUS VIDEO: A very funny look at the various shortcomings of Snake's Revenge.

http://www.revver.com/video/906691/snakes-revenge-nes-review/